In front of the fire stood an old, plain, brown desk, and on the desk stood a photograph of Mrs. Fortescue in Court dress, and two telephones, neither of which was connected with a public line. Mr. Behrens had once heard Mr. Fortescue keep the Home Secretary waiting on one while he spoke to the Foreign Secretary on the other.
Fortescue now placed the tips of his fingers together in a manner much approved by bank managers of the old school, and said, “It’s an extremely delicate situation. You do see that, don’t you?”
“Oh, I do,” said Mr. Behrens.
“It is not a case in which direct or forceful methods are likely to achieve anything but disaster. It is not a problem which would appeal to Mr. Calder. That is why we have turned to you.”
Mr. Behrens was not sure whether to take this as a compliment or not. He contented himself with merely saying, “Yes.”
“Was Tabor at all suspicious?”
“I don’t think so. No. Fortunately
he
recognised
me
first. That was a great help. He was in my class at Leipzig High School in 1934. I taught him Latin actually. Not science.”
“And he would find out, if he chose to inquire, that you were an habitue of the Lamb.”
“I have been using it for over a year. And so, incidentally, has he. We might have met at any time. It just happened to be last Saturday.”
“We can only hope,” said Mr. Fortescue, “that we are not too late.”
There was a touch of genuine sadness in his voice.
“Professor Mann is in London. He arrived last night. Tabor motored up to town this morning. I have no doubt they are deep in talk now, even as we are.”
“Did you have the professor followed?” asked Mr. Behrens.
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Fortescue. “Certainly not. As I told you, this situation is extremely delicate. There is, on the face of it, nothing at all – apart, one would hope, from a certain natural patriotism – to prevent Tabor leaving this country and working for our enemies. We are not at war. And Tabor is not in government employment. Nor is he subject to the Official Secrets Act. Even his patriotism might work either way. His mother was English, but his father was German.”
“But he is too good a scientist for us to lose him.”
Mr. Fortescue was not a man given to extravagant statement. So when he said, “He is one of the ablest scientists in the world,” the words conveyed more to Mr. Behrens than an elaborate eulogy.
“He has specialised in cosmoelectronics, which is the electronics of the universe. It is a study which bears the same relationship to electronics as electronics does to old-fashioned electricity. It is almost more a logic than a science. There are no blueprints. The handful of men whose minds are capable of understanding and studying it make up their own rules, draw their own charts and speak their own language.”
“And Professor Paulus Mann is one of them?”
“He was a pioneer. Tabor studied under him at Leipzig. I do not suppose that the professor would claim to be in the front rank now. Nevertheless it was a very astute move sending him over here. Tabor will listen to him if he will listen to no one else.”
“I remember Tabor at school,” said Mr. Behrens. “A very withdrawn boy. I used to imagine that he was bullied, but in retrospect I doubt it. He was too self-contained to make a good subject for bullies. A natural enemy of the establishment. Do you think we have any chance of keeping him?”
“By force, no chance at all. If we keep him, it will have to be by conviction.”
“Are you suggesting,” said Mr. Behrens, “that I should corner the poor young man and lecture him on the Western way of life?”
“It may come to that,” said Mr. Fortescue seriously. “Much will depend on what success Professor Mann is having with him now. I must ask you to stay within reach of a telephone for a while.”
On his way out Mr. Behrens paused for a moment in the anteroom to admire the Landseer painting which hung on the wall. It was an allegorical study showing Thrift conducting a tug of war with Extravagance. Thrift seemed to be winning, but only just.
It was almost exactly three weeks later, at four o’clock in the afternoon, that the call came.
“He has thrown up his job at the refinery,” said the thin voice of Mr. Fortescue. “He did not even offer notice. He told them he was going, and he simply walked out.”
“That’s bad. Where is he now?”
“He’s taken his stuff out to that public house – the one you mentioned.”
“The Lamb. Yes. Is there any reason to think that he’s actually contemplating leaving the country?”
“No direct evidence. But Professor Mann is flying back to Düsseldorf on Monday. And he has booked two seats.”
“If Tabor
is
at the Lamb,” said Mr. Behrens, looking out of the window at the snow, which had started to fall again, “he might not get to London Airport all that easily on Monday.”
“We can’t rely on his being snow-bound. You’ll have to go over and talk to him.”
Mr. Behrens had received some steep instruction from Mr. Fortescue from time to time, but this seemed to him to be nearly the steepest. He opened his mouth to protest, but shut it again. All the objections which were occurring to him would already have occurred to all superiors. If this really was the only possible course, slight though the chance of success might be, it would have to be pursued to the end.
He said, “I shall have to tell some story to account for my arrival.”
“Tell no story at all. Explain exactly who you are, and what you are doing.”
“You think that is wise?”
“Certainly. The other side are not fools. They will have warned him against you already.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Behrens. “Very well. I’ll see what I can do.”
His aunt, with whom he shared the Old Rectory at Lamperdown, said crossly, “You can’t be thinking of going out in weather like this.”
“The call of duty,” said Mr. Behrens. “One of my pupils in difficulties.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said the old lady, who was no fool. “It’s one of your jobs. I suppose Mr. Calder’s in it with you. And that dog of his.”
“No,” said Mr. Behrens sadly. “I fear this is something I have to do on my own.”
It was not a pleasant drive. As dusk fell, the snow thickened, crusting the windshield and collecting on the blades of the wiper. After a few miles Mr. Behrens had to stop his car and get out with a cloth to clear away the accumulation. On the first occasion he was incautious enough to do this on a slight upgradient, and found when he tried to restart that his wheels were unable to grip the road, which had frozen under fresh-fallen snow. He succeeded eventually in sliding backward onto a level patch, and finally got going with a wild scurry. After that, he chose his stopping places more carefully.
It was nearly eight o’clock when he saw the welcoming lights of the Lamb. The last hour had been a nightmare of crawling along frozen humpbacked roads which dropped on either side into black ditches. There was nothing amiss with Mr. Behrens’ nerves, and he had unexpected reserves of stamina in his thin body, but he could not refrain from a sigh of relief as he climbed out of the driving seat.
Ruby was in the empty public bar, polishing glasses. “Not that we’ll get any customers on a night like this,” she said. “We got your telephone message. I put a hot bottle in your bed.”
“Good girl,” said Mr. Behrens. “Is Mr. Tabor here?”
“He’s in the coffee room. I told him you were coming.”
“Did he seem to be surprised?”
“No. He said he’d been expecting you’d be over.”
“I’ll join him in a moment. And make us up a good fire. We may be sitting up late tonight. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
For a moment Ruby’s brown eyes rested on him shrewdly. He wondered if she had any idea what was going on. Tabor had been alone in the place for some days, and a man who is unhappy and undecided would confide in any sympathetic listener.
“Don’t you go keeping him up late,” said Ruby. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”
“So have I,” said Mr. Behrens sadly. “So have I.”
“Can you honestly, and in all conscience,” said Tabor, “give me a single reason why I shouldn’t go?”
Mr. Behrens got up, selected three more lumps of coal from the nearly empty scuttle and placed them on the fire.
“I’ve spent the best part of four hours giving you reasons,” he said. He had forced himself to keep any traces of weariness, any touch of exasperation, out of his voice. The fact that Tabor had been willing to argue at all must in itself be a hopeful sign. His mind was not yet closed.
“And what do they amount to? That the world is divided into two halves, the West and the East. The rights and the wrongs. The Goods and the Bads – like a film.”
“It’s not quite as simple as that—”
“You’re arguing a prepared case, like a barrister who’s been briefed. I accept that you’ve got your job to do – you’re acting on orders. You’ve been very frank with me about that. But it doesn’t make your case any stronger.”
“If I didn’t believe what I’ve been telling you,” said Mr. Behrens flatly, “I shouldn’t have bothered to come out on a night like this.”
“All right,” said Tabor. “I take that back. I’ll accept that you, personally, believe what you’re saying. But that’s because you’ve been conditioned to believe it. Very few people in the West are capable of thinking internationally any more. But if you could only get outside your traditional English skin for a moment, shake off the moss, clear away the cobwebs, you’d see what everyone else has been seeing for a long time now – that you’re finished. You’re dying on your feet. Every symptom of degeneracy is there. Softness, selfishness, fear. The sort of softness that’s bringing up a whole generation to think that it can do what it likes, without facing unpleasant consequences. For God’s sake, what sort of mess do you think they’ll make of the world after an education like that!”
He paused as if inviting comment, but Mr. Behrens found nothing to say. He wasn’t particularly hopeful himself of the generation which was growing up around him.
“And for selfishness – read your newspaper. Fatuous go-slow strikes, when now’s the moment, if ever, to be going fast. Mad industrial disputes, which not only do neither side any good, but which both sides
know
in advance will do nothing but harm. Do you think they’re working according to the rule in China today?”
“I think they probably are,” said Mr. Behrens. “Only it happens to be rather a different sort of rule.”
Tabor ignored this. His knuckles showed white as he gripped the arms of the chair.
“And fear,” he said. “The smell of fear is everywhere. It rises like the steam off their backs, where they squat in the rain in Trafalgar Square. Squat like aborigines, rocking and moaning, in front of some juju they are trying to propitiate.”
Mr. Behrens thought, he’s arguing with himself. And the real trouble is, he doesn’t know whether he wants to win or lose. Half of him’s on my side. One good pull, and I’ll have him.
He said, “Aren’t you overlooking one thing? And isn’t it the one thing that matters? I’ll take your own example. I haven’t much to say for the way we bring up children. We used to be a lot too strict with them, and nowadays we’re a great deal too easy. We’re about due for a swing of the pendulum in the other direction. But as for strikes and antinuclear demonstrations – we could, in theory, stop them if we wanted to. The Executive has the power. It could break strikes with troops and break up demonstrations with mounted policemen. But in practice, it can’t and it doesn’t, because we value freedom above expediency. It’s taken us four hundred years to get there, and I’m not prepared to abandon the position just because another country has tried a new system and found that it paid quick dividends.”
“Freedom,” said Tabor. “You’re prepared to accept inefficiency, selfishness, slackness, lack of purpose, timidity and greed – provided you have on the other side of the scales a fictitious thing called freedom.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Behrens. “And it isn’t fictitious. If you’d ever lived in a police state, you’d know that.”
“What do you mean by a police state?”
Mr. Behrens was desperately tired. But he could feel that Tabor was even more tired. If he had not been, he would not perhaps have presented him with such an opening.
“In Belgrade last year,” Behrens said, “a meeting was called. Not a political meeting. The question to be discussed was the formation of a new national theatre. The government objected. They did not ban the meeting; they simply gave it out that they did not approve. Some hundreds of people came. Many because they had not heard of the ban. Some from idle curiosity, or even by mistake, because they happened to be passing and stopped to listen. As soon as the meeting started, the police blocked all exits. No one was allowed to leave until his name and address had been taken and confirmed. For some days nothing happened. Then the police visited every house on the list – every house – there were hundreds, so it took time – and broke every window in every house. No one of course dared to stop them, but one or two people did ask them why they were doing it, and the police said, ‘You make trouble for us, we make trouble for you.’ It was mid-winter, so it wasn’t amusing. That’s what I mean by a police state.”
There was a long silence. Then Tabor said, “That’s just a story you’ve heard. It may not be true.”
“I assure you it is true,” said Mr. Behrens. “I was at the meeting myself.”
Tabor started to pace up and down the room. Mr. Behrens said to himself, “I believe that’s fixed him.”
It was at this moment that he heard the telephone ringing out in the hall. Such was his preoccupation that it could have been ringing for some time. Tabor seemed to be unconscious of it, too.
The ringing stopped. There was a pause. Then the door opened and Ruby came in. She was wearing a quilted dressing gown and a grey woollen scarf around her neck, on which her tousled head rested like a single cut flower. She looked indignant.
“If you’re going to sit up nattering till three in the morning you might take your own telephone calls.”
They both stared at her. Mr. Behrens had the irrelevant thought that when girls displayed their figures they often looked absurd. It was when they hid them that they always became attractive.